A while back I participated in a very unique auction league and I want to recreate that experience. I also want to incorporate a theme idea that I have been batting around in my head for some time. I'm hoping that the combination of these two themes makes for an exciting, unique, and unpredictable experience.

In the auction portion of things, you will have 1,000 credits to bid on 25 different categories. Each category contains a group of players. Draft order will be determined based on who bid the most on that category. This means we will be running 25 separate drafts concurrently.

Now what will these categories consist of, you ask? This is where you come in. When you sign up for this league, you will provide your own group of players using the Draft Center. It can be any group of players that can be searched for in the Draft Center. You can do something as simple as all New York Yankees who won Gold Gloves (49 players) or you can go as complicated switch-hitting middle infielders with D or D- fielding and slugged less than 0.300 (51 players). Make sure when you come up with your group of players, you adhere to the following rules:

1) Make sure your group has at least 24 unique player seasons and preferably no more than 75. We want to provide owners a variety of players to choose from, but not too much.
2) Set the season type to "Full". This way we eliminate the danger of accidentally including clones.

When you sign up and provide your category, please include the total number of players in your group and either explain how you searched for your group or include a link to the search. This way I can make sure that the whitelist is as accurate as possible. I'll post the whitelist for each category in the Theme Leagues forum ahead of time, that way you can peruse each category and plan your auction accordingly.

Since there will be 24 owners and we will need 25 players, I will sweeten the pot for one lucky entrant. I'll select a number from 2-24 using a random number generator. The person who signs up in that slot will get to nominate two groups.

Once the league is full, I will give owners 72 hours to sitemail me their auction sheets. Again, you have 1,000 credits to spread across 25 categories. You must use at least one credit on each category. I will collect the information and use it to create the draft order for all 25 drafts. Ties will be broken via a random sequence generator.

I haven't quite decided how the drafts will be run, but I'll likely run five drafts per day from Monday through Friday. That way we can get through the drafts in a week.

Two more things: First, I ask that when selecting your groups, we end up with at least 10 pitcher categories. This way we can ensure that owners have enough innings to make it through a season. Second, since this league will start after the 2012 players are announced, I will go through each category and adjust the whitelist to add any 2012 players that qualify.

I think this league will be a lot of fun. The groups we can come up with can consist of fantastic players, horrible players and anywhere in between. Lots of strategy is involved in this one. I hope I can find 23 like-minded people.

I will try this. These hitters should provide for some competetive bidding. They didn't quite make the 200 Hit plateau in a single season. I actually thought there would be more players than what I got.

Change 1 statistical criteria, select "H" for Hits and set the range to 199 for both boxes. This gives 26 players.

I'm in, for sure. But before I declare a selection of players, a question: do we have to have a list that's confined to either pitchers OR hitters, so that it's searchable in the draft utility? Or could we name a criteria that yielded some of both, that is easy to research -- for example, all the eligible players on the 1927 Yankees?

Posted by tdoak on 10/8/2012 9:34:00 AM (view original):I'm in, for sure. But before I declare a selection of players, a question: do we have to have a list that's confined to either pitchers OR hitters, so that it's searchable in the draft utility? Or could we name a criteria that yielded some of both, that is easy to research -- for example, all the eligible players on the 1927 Yankees?

Thank you for joining, tdoak. It originally started out as being all hitters or all pitchers, not a combination of the two. But now that I can setup hyperlinks to the draft center, I don't see why I can't make an exception. Though I need to clarify to everyone else that all players must be under one umbrella category. So "1927 Yankees" is fine, but "300 K pitchers and 200 K hitters" is not.

I like having groups combined of both hitters and pitchers - that allows us to use different roster composition strategies.

I do have another question though: You have explicitly stated that clones will not be allowed. What happens if the same player season shows up on two lists (for example, someone picks the players on the 1986 Red Sox)? If I've already gotten Clemens in the Aces subcategory, I wouldn't be allowed to take him again in the Red Sox draft?

Posted by reddtrain on 10/8/2012 4:41:00 PM (view original):I like having groups combined of both hitters and pitchers - that allows us to use different roster composition strategies.

I do have another question though: You have explicitly stated that clones will not be allowed. What happens if the same player season shows up on two lists (for example, someone picks the players on the 1986 Red Sox)? If I've already gotten Clemens in the Aces subcategory, I wouldn't be allowed to take him again in the Red Sox draft?